


fidélité et bravoure (á l’écossée, la française, et l’anglaise)

by icygrace



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Off-screen Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 04:24:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6223747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icygrace/pseuds/icygrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Catherine pursues an English alliance for France. Bash learns some things about loyalty and bravery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fidélité et bravoure (á l’écossée, la française, et l’anglaise)

**Author's Note:**

> Another long-ago written AU for you all. Enjoy!

“I suppose you realize I’m not the best person to ask for advice.”

 

“Because of your pagan heritage?”

 

“And because I would benefit from a break with Rome.”

 

Francis raises an eyebrow.

 

“Kenna and I agreed that I would speak to you about annulling our marriage. In a Protestant France, we could simply divorce and be done with it. No need to put you in the uncomfortable position of hearing a request you may have to refuse to help us with.”

 

“I’m sorry –”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

Francis gives him a knowing look. “Nevertheless, I trust you to put your self-interest aside for the sake of France. You are perhaps the only person I trust to do that.”

 

“It will cause trouble. Perhaps a member of your family should _not_ break with Rome to assure Catholics that they will continue to have a voice at court. But it must be someone loyal to you.”

 

“My mother, perhaps? You two are the only ones I can trust.”

 

“Perhaps Catherine, yes. I may have your ear, but Catherine also has your ear and more power and money besides. Speaking of Catherine, what does she say about this? She cannot be pleased at the thought of a Protestant France.”

 

“It was my idea.”

 

He jumps at the sound of her voice; he’d had no idea she was in the room. “Why? How?”

 

“I told her what Condé said to me about making Mary his wife. That she could convert and that she’d hardly be the first to do so for political reasons.”

 

“And I thought _why not Francis first_? Beat them to the punch, so to speak. I would rather my son be a living Protestant king than a dead Catholic one.”

 

“I think it’s the best of some less than ideal solutions.”

 

“You don’t think me a terrible person? Or husband, at least?” Francis presses.

 

 _Oh, little brother._ “Mary is no true wife to you anymore.”

 

“But you loved her once.”

 

Catherine raises an eyebrow. “What a time to travel down that road again.”

 

“Mother –”

 

“The Mary I once loved would never have betrayed you like this. She loved _you_. Everything she did was for you or for Scotland. But that Mary is dead. I understood what she endured, even the liberties that you allowed her because of it, but she’s done so much worse than take advantage of those liberties. This Mary endangered you, endangered France _and_ Scotland, again and again, all for a lover. So I feel nothing at the thought of your letting her face the fate she has earned. I once valued her life more than my own, but I do not value it more than yours or our brothers’ and sisters’ –”

 

“Or Kenna’s,” Francis finishes for him. “Whatever has passed between you, you love her still, don’t you, brother?”

 

It is strange, how different they are, how different the women they love are, and yet how similar and how well they understand each other’s pain because of it.

 

\---

_Careful, brother. Today may not be the day to embark on a long and dangerous journey._

_And why is that?_

_Well, if you're looking for a fight, you'll surely find one. Is that what you're doing?_

_To lose a wife is a difficult thing. As you well know, from the look of you._

 

\---

 

He doesn’t answer, but that is answer enough.

 

“Why do you seek an annulment?” Catherine asks.

 

“How did you –”

 

“You must be more careful to make sure you are alone before you speak if you wish to keep something private.”

 

“Our marriage is over.”

 

“Why?”

 

He pauses, unable to articulate a clear answer.

 

\---

 

_You want honesty? Very well. I got this cut while framing an innocent man who's probably going to die. And I did this for what they call “the greater good.” I kill when it's expedient. I lie when it's expedient. That's who I am. . . ._

 

_You're my wife. You should tell me the truth without being asked. Did you tell Catherine that my mother was talking to Rome about getting me legitimized? I could have been executed, Kenna. . . ._

 

_I planned a party. I am not excusing Antoine's deception. I'm wondering why it is so hard for you to trust me. . . ._

\---

 

“If it’s because of the King of Navarre, you’re a fool,” Catherine says. “Whatever happened there – and I sincerely doubt anything did; from what I saw, she constantly put distance between herself and that fool – you’ve had your own fun; I saw that half-wild woman you brought to the castle before the siege began.”

 

“She could have been Nostradamus’s sister,” Francis half-whispers.

 

“Shut it,” Bash hisses at his brother. Louder, to Catherine, he replies, “You despise Kenna.”

 

“I did think the girl a twit for quite a time, but I will tell you she is no Mary.”

 

“What –”

 

“She’s loyal. I heard of her conversation with Renaude, in the bowels of the castle, and my spies had told me of their liaison –”

 

“You really do know everything –” Francis interjects off-handedly.

 

“But I _also_ heard she warned you away from what otherwise would have been a fatal wound when you fought her lover.”

 

“Perhaps she just meant to save her own skin,” Bash says, feeling oddly defensive. “If he’d won, the castle would have –”

 

“No, Kenna would have been safe no matter who won. Renaude is dead and she is safe with you, but if the castle had fallen to Renaude’s army, you would be dead and he would have saved your wife as Mary now begs of Condé. The only difference is that your wife would have been free to do as she pleased if _you’d_ died rather than the traitor Renaude.”

 

“I suppose that is true.”

 

“I spoke to your mother about her once, before you were married. She’d done a very stupid thing.”

 

“Kenna or my mother?”

 

“Both of them, actually. Diane had done the deed and Kenna told me of it.”

 

“What was the deed?” he asks, despite himself, suspecting he already knows the answer.

 

“Trying to have you legitimized.”

 

“Well, you’re certainly making a case for Kenna’s loyalty, Mother.”

 

“She had no reason to be loyal to Sebastian then. Anyway, I told your mother there were two things I cannot abide –”

 

“Betrayal and stupidity,” Francis finishes. He gives a rueful smile. “I’ve heard it all my life.”

 

“And you wonder why I despise Mary so now?” Catherine retorts. “Yes, betrayal and stupidity, and Kenna was guilty of both. I said one could be tempered and the other could never be remedied. It seems I was wrong. And there is so little loyalty in this world, Sebastian. Take care not to squander it.”   


Catherine has given him much to think about, but now is hardly the time.

 

“Speaking of Mary, if she has her way, Francis, Condé will kill you, become king, and make _your wife_ his queen,” Catherine says. “We must act quickly.”

 

“Perhaps this was Mary’s plan all along,” Francis whispers.

 

Bash aches at the pain in his brother’s words. “Francis –”

 

“Please don’t.”

 

It’s then that he learns the other half of Catherine’s plan. Francis’s conversion would allow him to divorce Mary on grounds of adultery without waiting for the Vatican’s approval.

 

A queen’s adultery is treason, so Mary’s life will be forfeit as soon as she is captured by anyone loyal to Francis.

 

The promise of Francis’s conversion and her greatest rival’s head on a platter will seal the marriage agreement Catherine has brokered between Francis and Queen Elizabeth of England.

 

In turn, Elizabeth will betray her alliance with Condé, break their betrothal, as there is no proof that they were ever married by proxy, and supply Francis the gold and troops she promised Condé.

 

\---

 

They do not need wait until Mary is captured; she returns of her own volition. She begs and pleads and even Bash begins to wonder if there is truth to her words, but Francis’s heart is stone to her.

 

No one tells her how the façade crumbles when there are none but his mother and his brother to see.

 

Catherine admits to him in a moment of odd, uncharacteristic moment of vulnerable honesty that it breaks her heart, but that the Queen of Scots was careless with her son’s heart and proved herself utterly unworthy of it. She was nearly the death of him. Francis may hurt now, but the acute temporary pain serves to spare him worse pain in the future.

 

Bash finds that he agrees. _Brave Mary_ , he called her once, and he feels such a fool for it.

 

Mary hardened his brother, tore out his good heart, and stomped upon the pieces. His love for her proved his weakness as a king and her destruction of it his salvation.

 

Now, Francis does not falter as he did so many times in the past. Mary will be executed for her crimes against king and country.

 

\---

 

“How can you allow Francis to do this – no, _support_ Francis in doing this?” Kenna shrieks, raining surprisingly strong blows on his chest with closed fists.

 

Even with Francis’s conversion, an annulment or a divorce is no longer something he wishes to seek. He does trust Kenna – in spite of himself, because of Catherine’s advice, he isn’t really sure. Either way, Catherine is right: Kenna is loyal.

 

But he will not make Francis’s mistakes. He cannot. They are all already endangered enough and Kenna’s loyalty may be a liability now; she may be torn between her husband and her friend and queen. This is why he’s only told Kenna now that Mary is guarded round the clock.

 

“Kenna, please –”

 

“What is _wrong_ with you?”

 

He pins her arms at her sides to prevent her from continuing to strike him.

 

“You claimed you loved her once!”

 

“I’m sorry, Kenna, I truly am, but she betrayed Francis. And France. And your own Scotland. Not once, not twice, but again and again.”

 

“You could say the same of me,” she whispers, looking down.

 

“You never betrayed France or Scotland. In fact, you willingly endangered yourself for your own country. And anyway, it is different. You and I agreed to lead separate lives. And when my life was endangered by Renaude and his men, you warned me and that warning likely saved my life.” Some of his words are Catherine’s, but they are all true.

 

“I – I couldn’t have borne seeing you hurt,” Kenna says to the ground.

 

“Mary’s affair was conducted with Francis’s permission, but she helped Condé escape – in itself, treason. As was her affair, but again, Francis had agreed to allow it and shield her. But now she has abandoned him and every one of us to save her own skin when things would not have gotten so dire without her treasonous interference. And that after Francis sent troops to Scotland, leaving France dangerously unprotected.”

 

It’s only then that Kenna looks up again. “It’s – Mary wouldn’t –”

 

“Until recently, I would have agreed with you, but Mary _did_. It seems the old Mary died when she gave Condé her heart.”

 

Kenna sags against him.

 

\---

 

Even if Francis had been tempted to soften against Mary, it would not have mattered. Elizabeth Tudor will be his wife now and Elizabeth Tudor will not suffer her to live –

 

Not because Elizabeth hates Mary, her cousin, despite the threat Mary, as an unimpeachably legitimate Catholic with the best claim to Elizabeth’s throne, poses to her.

 

In fact, in the conversations Bash has been invited to opine on, his future sister-in-law has repeatedly expressed both concerns about the precedent set by executing a reigning monarch and discomfort with having her own blood beheaded. She is hardly the bloodthirsty woman she has been painted as.

 

He also can’t help but wonder if the charges of adultery and treason discomfit her because they are the same charges brought against her late mother, the infamous Anne Boleyn.

 

But Elizabeth, while not cruel, is practical. She will marry the man Mary called husband, uniting two kingdoms that would easily cow Mary’s own. So Mary, if she lived, would have motivations both personal and political to rise up against them. Furthermore, having lived with the pall of her father’s scorned wife calling into question her legitimacy, Elizabeth likely cannot abide the idea that whatever children her marriage to Francis could produce might suffer the same uncertainty.

 

 _Brave Elizabeth_ , Bash thinks, who has never relied on a man to do for her what she can do for herself, is the wife his brother deserves.

 

But whether Francis can ever love her after losing his heart to the woman whose head he will give her as a wedding gift remains to be seen.

 

\---

 

The evening after Mary’s execution, when he returns to his rooms, to Kenna, with whom he hopes to rebuild his relationship, he thinks to himself that it is hardly the first time he is grateful to be the bastard and not the king.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a pre-2x22 AU, which means that when writing 1) I knew that Catherine was going to Elizabeth, but not why and 2) did not know Kenna was pregnant. This story assumes that Mary was actually going or would be believed to have gone to Condé for protection rather than as a ruse. Also, Elizabeth I is different than the one we see on screen.


End file.
